


Winter Falcon Punch

by Overlithe



Series: MCU Ship Ficlets Fleet [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Ficlet Collection, Food, Friendship, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-06 23:10:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4240197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overlithe/pseuds/Overlithe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Bucky/Sam ficlets, because the world always needs more Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, and especially Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson together. Scenarios and ratings vary, please see each ficlet’s header for details.</p><p>Title is because I simply cannot help myself.</p><p><em>Latest:</em> This isn’t the first time Sam has been woken up in the middle of the night thanks to one James Buchanan Barnes.</p><p>It’s definitely the first time that involves improvised maple syrup substitute, though.</p><p>Set post-<em>Captain America: Civil War</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction to Advanced Aerodynamics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky/Sam/physics. Established relationship, rated G.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by: 1) the Falcon concept in general and the info about Sam having a bird drone in CA:CW as the MCU equivalent to Redwing; 2) the fact that there’s a fair bit of maths involved in Bucky’s preternatural sniping skills, plus a panel in the comics in which he’s literally memorising the physics of the shield’s trajectory as part of his Captain America training; 3) me inevitably geeking out over 1) meeting 2).

**Introduction to Advanced Aerodynamics**

‘Hey.’

Sam nearly dropped his notebook. Despite his size and weight, Bucky was the stealthiest person Sam had ever met, which was saying a lot when your resumé included things like “pararescueman”, “Avenger”, and “that one incident with the sentient goo which we are never mentioning again”.

Bucky held out a mug. ‘You were up really early. I thought you might like some coffee.’

‘Thanks,’ Sam said, and edged out of the way a little so Bucky could sit next to him on the flat rock he’d been using as a bench.

Other discoveries Sam had made ever since he’d got properly acquainted with Bucky Barnes: why exactly would someone think he was the kind you saved, that the two of them got along great just as soon as they weren’t trying to kill each other and Bucky wasn’t having his mind ripped apart by some of the worst dickholes in the world, and that Bucky looked damn fine in that tight shirt.

He also made a great cup of coffee.

‘Sorry, am I interrupting something?’ Bucky said on his side of the rock, slightly hunched, hands in his slacks’ pockets, even the metal one.

‘Nah. I was just, you know…’ Sam flipped through his notebook while he took a sip of coffee. ‘Just working on some stuff for the Redwing drone. Studying bird flight. That sort of thing. Nothing much.’ He felt his face grow a little hot without quite knowing why.

Though it probably had something to do with having been in the patch of scrubland behind the house’s backyard since the crack of dawn, mechanical pencil in hand.

‘No, I get it,’ Bucky said. ‘You want to change the propulsive thrust.’

‘Exactly,’ Sam said, then the rest of his brain caught up. ‘Wait. Did you just—’

Bucky looked a little miffed.

(Further Bucky Barnes discoveries: this man who probably knew fifteen different ways to kill someone with a melon baller reacted to mild annoyances with a facial expression that could only be described as “adorable”. Sam loved it.)

‘What, a guy can’t talk about physics these days?’ he said.

Sam tried to suppress a lopsided grin, without much success. ‘No. I just thought you’d been more of a Homecoming King type. Did they have homecoming back then? In between hunting mammoths?’

‘First of all, we only hunted mammoths once a year.’ He touched his chest with his right hand. ‘Second, I’ll have you know that if it hadn’t been for me, Steve Rogers would still be repeating tenth grade math. Ha, this one time…’ He trailed off, his burst of excitement suddenly spent.

‘What?’

Bucky’s face reddened. ‘Nothing. Just slipped my mind, is all. Anyway, I can’t draw more than a stick figure to save my life, but I was great at science. So talk my ear off about birds all you want.’

He was ashamed of his damaged brain, Sam knew, and he wasn’t the kind of person to bleed on someone else. It was enough to make your heart ache.

(Most important Bucky discovery of all: Sam loved him.)

‘All right,’ Sam said, then set the mug down at his side, and edged closer to Bucky. ‘I appreciate someone who’s into aerodynamics.’

Bucky gave him one of his rare glowing smiles. It was enough to make your heart feel sunny. ‘Yeah?’ He slipped his right hand onto Sam’s thigh. ‘What else do you appreciate?’

‘Oh, you know.’ Sam grinned and put his arm around the other man. ‘Lift-to-drag ratio.’

‘Bernoulli’s principle,’ Bucky whispered, ‘is often misunder—’

Sam pulled him in for a kiss tasting of coffee and mint before Bucky could finish.

It was without a doubt the sexiest thing Sam had ever heard.

++The End++


	2. Vehicular Diplomacy for Beginners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky and Sam’s first real conversation. Set during _Captain America: Civil War_. Rated T.
> 
> The rating is for themes and mentions of suicidal ideation. Bucky’s mental state at the time this is set is… not great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to add another fic to this collection. Unfortunately I was dealing with serious health issues throughout 2016 (the Cursed Year We Do Not Speak Of). However, I am finally doing better, so here’s the butt phone fic I’m sure everyone has been waiting for! (Again, I’m so sorry.)

**Vehicular Diplomacy for Beginners**

He was in Germany again, like a bad penny, and he was waiting for Steve to finish stealing a car again, like a bad joke. Maybe he’d never been to this city before, or maybe he had, but it didn’t matter; it was a different place. This time there were buildings of glass and steel rising above islands of old-fashioned tile roofs, and the pre-dawn sky was full of the haze of street lamps and flashing signs and headlights. 

This time there was Wilson, sitting on the other end of the low concrete wall, a big chasm of empty air between the two of them. Bucky could hear him breathing, even under the thousand city noises that would ebb and flow and from time to time make something (some thing) behind his navel knot up.

‘Can I. Um, can I ask you something?’

He glanced very quickly at Wilson before looking back down at the pavement, long enough to see him tense up just a little more (and who could blame him?).

‘No.’

‘Okay,’ Bucky said, and stared at a discarded cigarette butt lying close to his right foot, the filter paper stained with lipstick the colour of arterial blood.

‘Just ask your damn question.’

For a second Bucky was sure he had misheard, even though his ears were sharp enough to hear a footfall on the other end of a dark corridor. He glanced up at Wilson again, but he couldn’t read anything in his smooth skin, so he just stared at a neon sign off to the right instead. That was easier.

‘I—there’s all these people trying to catch me, trying to kill me, and that makes sense. Someone like me, a shoot on sight order, it’s—that’s the best option.’ He paused, swallowed. The words were starting to catch in his throat, just like the tangle that never went too long without scraping the insides of his skull, all broken glass and jagged edges. But his hands, the metal hand and the other one, were both bunched real tight inside the too-small pockets of his jacket, and that helped a little, he supposed. ‘And Steve knows me from Before, so I think I understand that too. But you, uh.’

His tongue tripped over the words again, feeling the weight of Wilson’s gaze on him like the metal band in a restraint. But in the neon sign, the first N in 24 STUNDEN was blinking on and off, and even though he was really stupid, he couldn’t pretend he didn’t get the message.

‘I mean… you know what it’s really like, with me, the things I can do. You don’t like me, you don’t know me, you got no reason not to lock me up somewhere until this is over. So I guess that’s what I don’t get.’

His mouth was dry. He swallowed again, went back to looking at the discarded cigarette.

‘You’re upset because I’m not locking you up?’

Bucky didn’t look up. He wasn’t like anyone else, but even he knew there was only one expression that went with that tone.

‘I’m not upset. I…’ All the words piled up again, so instead he straightened up and took his skin hand out of his pocket. Wilson tensed—ready to fight him, Bucky knew—then relaxed just a little when he saw that the thing Bucky was pulling out of the jacket lining was not a weapon, just a cell phone. Bucky placed it on the lip of the concrete wall, in the space between the two of them.

‘I have this phone,’ he said. ‘It’s, uh, untraceable. So you don’t have to worry about that if you use it. If you think it’s best. I mean, on me. If I…’

He was fumbling, and when he looked up at the secret message blinking in the neon sign, that only made the wires under his skin fizz and sting harder, instead of being any help. He thought back to that time (that was real, wasn’t it? a real memory) not long after he’d arrived in the bolthole in Romania. He’d laid out some paper in front of him, and if he found the right set of words to write down, Steve would see there was no need to look for him, if he was looking, and would go on with the life Bucky had read about. Then he would track down some place where no one ever went and no one would ever find him, maybe in a wood, thick and dark. He could picture himself, giddy with relief, so buoyed up with it he could practically float, but he would make sure the water was deep and the arm and the rocks heavy enough.

In the end, though, no matter how many hours he spent staring at the page, pen in hand, all his dumb brain managed to squeeze out were a bunch of crossed-out scribbles in a white sea of blank paper. When he scrunched it up something started up in his midsection, and at first he thought his body was breaking down, but soon enough he realised he was laughing. He hadn’t thought he was capable of that, and at first the noises coming out of his mouth sounded all rusted up, but soon enough he was lying on the floor, flesh hand clamped over his mouth so no one would hear him, guffawing away until his belly ached and the laughter turned into hiccups (he needed some time to figure out what those were, too).

 _You’re a real cut-up_ , he’d thought, and for his next wild idea maybe he could come up with a sure-fire scheme to win the… he tried to grab the word, but it darted away from him.

After that he had gone outside even though he didn’t really like it and used some of the money from under the floorboards to buy half a dozen chocolate _gogoși_. Back in the apartment, he ate them one by one, sitting on the floor, and when he was done he licked the powdered sugar off his fingers. ‘Fuck it, then,’ he said to the empty room in a whisper. And for then, that had been that.

‘Where did you get this?’

Bucky looked at Wilson, who was staring at the phone lying on the concrete wall.

‘It’s a burner phone,’ Bucky said, then the meaning of Wilson’s question dawned on him. ‘I didn’t steal it.’

‘Sure,’ Wilson said with a little shrug.

‘Hydra had me take things sometimes. So that makes me a thief. But I didn’t steal this.’

‘Okay, dude. Didn’t realise you felt that strongly about it.’

Bucky looked away, shame flaring up again. He didn’t know why he’d said all that. It wasn’t like he could make Wilson think better of him; the only times they’d met before all this, Bucky had been trying to kill him. And it wasn’t like he felt anything except tired.

He sat in silence again, not sure if he should put the phone back in his jacket or if he should just leave it where it was. Dawn was coming, filling the sky with dirty grey light, and ahead of him the neon sign was starting to dim. The N was still blinking, though, accusatory. Bucky was almost entirely sure that he’d once heard someone or something say that trying hard was what really mattered. That was a lie, though; it had to be, when you kept fucking up.

‘Hey.’

Wilson was staring at some spot far off in the horizon. He didn’t look wary, or annoyed, he just looked like he’d been awake for a thousand years. _You and me both_ , Bucky thought, then it occurred to him that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d put those words together. ‘Yeah?’ he said.

Wilson kept staring straight ahead. ‘Is Steve right about you?’

Bucky rolled the question around in his head. He thought back to waking up, switching back on, his body still a little numb with pain and his arm trapped in that big hydraulic press. Steve had stepped up to him like someone stepping up to a lion with a paw caught in a trap, keeping his distance, his face drawn. Then he’d stepped away with Wilson to decide what they were going to do, but he’d still kept his eye on Bucky. All of that had been the right thing to do, but even so Bucky was sure he didn’t really understand Wilson’s question. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Did you set off the bomb in Vienna?’

‘No. I didn’t kill those people.’ At least he didn’t have to think about that answer, even if the fact that there was any number of people he hadn’t killed didn’t really make any difference to the ones he had.

‘And all that stuff about the squad of super assassins, that’s real.’

He looked at Wilson, who looked back, and who right now didn’t look mistrustful, or annoyed, or fed up. There were just his brown eyes, unblinking in the early sunlight. Bucky looked away, the skin on his face suddenly too tight; he didn’t like looking at people and didn’t like it when they looked at him, but he wasn’t entirely sure that was the whole reason. He dry-swallowed. ‘Yeah. Yeah, it’s real. I wish it weren’t.’

‘Then we need all the super-soldiers we can get. Put your phone away and don’t try to dodge this like a dick.’ He shifted a little on the wall, to push the phone back towards Bucky. ‘Please tell me you didn’t smuggle this in your ass.’

‘Sure I did. It was hard to take calls, though.’ The words were out of Bucky’s mouth while his brain was still working through the stuff Wilson had said, and he looked at the other man in a stomach-curdling panic. All Wilson did, though, was shake his head, a corner of his mouth pulling up, and Bucky was mostly sure that, for now, things were all right.

‘Does Steve usually take this long to steal a car?’ Wilson asked as Bucky was slipping the phone back into his jacket.

A memory bubbled up, sharp enough to cut and so real Bucky could almost smell it. ‘He’s making sure he picks the dumbest-looking car.’

Wilson gave him an incredibly unimpressed look.

‘It’s true. I’d bet on it,’ he added softly.

‘You don’t have any money.’

‘We’ll still be lucky if he doesn’t show up in a hearse.’

It wasn’t a hearse. Instead, a little later, just a moment after the skin on the back of Bucky’s neck picked up the rumble of tires, a VW Beetle rolled up and came to a stop in front of the concrete wall. Steve stuck his head out.

You kinda had to wonder where the rest of him was.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Wilson muttered under his breath.

‘I told—’

‘Man, shut the hell up.’ He swatted Bucky’s shoulder as he stepped past him, and that didn’t make either of them flinch. ‘Come on, quit wasting time.’

Bucky looked up, to the dazzle of daylight on the glass high-rises.

 _Yes_ , he thought. For now, things were all right.

++The End++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That bit in CA:CW where Sam refuses to move his seat up and you can see Bucky starting to crack up as he shifts in the back seat was one of the few things I enjoyed about CW, and also one of the greatest film moments of 2016. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this and please feel free to check out [my Bucky/Sam community on Imzy](https://www.imzy.com/buckysam)! (I also have a personal blog [here](https://www.imzy.com/sparklesquid), but I don’t think that’s nearly as interesting. There’s a comics pic of Sam trying to put out a fire by tearing his shirt off, though.)


	3. Applied Culinary Psychology I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This isn’t the first time Sam has been woken up in the middle of the night thanks to one James Buchanan Barnes.
> 
> It’s definitely the first time that involves improvised maple syrup substitute, though.
> 
> Set post CA:CW, rated T for language and canon-typical themes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: An extra-long ficlet (does it still count as a ficlet when it’s about 5,000 words?) to thank all of my readers for their patience as I take forever to add to this collection! I hope you’ll enjoy it. Also, I’d like to apologise to Canada in advance.

**Applied Culinary Psychology I**

Sam was a light sleeper. If two tours hadn’t made him one, then having to be the guy ready for a 2 a.m. call would have finished the job.

Since last year’s mess, though, he’d gone from a light sleeper to a no sleeper. He’d still fall asleep, sooner or later (usually later), and sometimes he’d even sleep well. Some of the best sleep he’d ever had had been during their stay in Wakanda, just seven- or eight-hour stretches of being flat-out dead to the world.

But you couldn’t stay in Wakanda forever, just like he didn’t seem to be able to stay asleep for very long these days. So at 2 or 3 or 4 a.m., some hour when you couldn’t yet picture dawn and normal people were in the deepest, stillest part of their sleep, bam. On like a switch. Then it was a choice between trying a bunch of techniques that usually did nothing or just stare at the ceiling as the seconds oozed past like half-dried concrete and hope he’d be reasonably lucid once it was dawn and he had an excuse to get out of bed. By now, he usually went with the latter; why waste time when he could at least have a few hours of quiet thought for himself? Yeah, sure, maybe “let’s come up with funny nicknames for the Big Clusterfuck of Two-oh-sixteen” wasn’t any kind of achievement, but after the amount of shit he’d had to swallow, he’d earned the right to laugh like a dumbass at “Stark Raving Bad”.

Tonight, though, tonight Sam was blissfully asleep when a noise snapped him awake. For a split-second, he was annoyed at what would _definitely_ have been eight hours of amazing sleep being so rudely interrupted. Then he realised he hadn’t heard a car alarm, or a garbage truck rolling along in the street.

That _clank_ had come from somewhere _inside_ the safehouse.

And it wasn’t the wood settling, or a heater coming to life.

He was awake now, fully, his muscles taut and his blood cold. He climbed out of bed, padded soundlessly across the bedroom, and pushed the door open.

On the other end of the corridor, there was a splash of light on the floor, coming from the kitchen.

Probably not anybody targeting them, then. Sam was sure they would be a lot more stealthy. Maybe some really amateur burglars.

He moved silently down the corridor. Their weapons were where they usually were, but even unarmed he had surprise on his side.

A series of soft thuds sounded from the kitchen as Sam stepped up to the ajar door and nudged it open with his foot.

His first thought was “baking-related crime scene”.

His second thought wasn’t really a thought, just his nose saying “breakfast”. He took a step into the kitchen.

Barnes was standing at the sink. He’d just put a saucepan and a whisk in the bowl and was now trying to rinse them out, a task that appeared to be surprisingly challenging when done one-handed. There were some other dirty utensils on the counter and on the table that took up most of the floorspace in the tiny kitchen, along with stuff like a half empty bag of flour and an egg carton with two eggs left.

‘What the hell?’

Barnes turned around. He — the Winter Soldier, notorious assassin and internationally wanted criminal, someone who’d come into Sam’s life by jumping onto his car and tearing off the steering wheel like it was made of paper — was wearing an apron over his jeans and tshirt. All things considered, it was way too much to deal with at ass o’clock in the morning.

‘Uh. Sorry,’ Barnes said. ‘I was just cleaning this up.’

Sam realised he was still tensed up in a ready-to-fight stance, his right hand balled into a fist. He made his body relax. He know he still looked pretty silly, bursting in for some ass-kicking while wearing a tank top and pajama bottoms, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that part.

‘You can have some,’ Barnes added, looking at the floor while soap suds dripped off his hand. ‘If you want.’

Sam looked back at the kitchen table, where — and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed this straight away — next to a measuring jug, there was a plate heaped with glazed pancakes.

 _So that’s where the smell was coming from_. The kitchen was small enough that the smell of washing-up liquid was pretty strong, but now his stomach and his eyes had finally put two and two together and under the fresh pines or fantasy citrus or whatever it was, there was an amazing scent of butter and cinnamon and melted sugar.

Sam couldn’t believe he’d missed _that_ , either. ‘You made pancakes?’

‘Yeah. I didn’t have anything to do. So.’ Barnes trailed off and gave a little one-shouldered shrug, his eyes still downcast. Sam was sure there was a faint blush spreading across his face, because apparently the whole defrosted one-armed ex-assassin + apron + pancakes-made-from-scratch equation needed some more elements added to it. ‘It seemed… like it wouldn’t do any harm.’

‘You know, “it’s harmless” is not really a great selling point for food. It’s not as bad as “spider-free recipe”, but…’

Barnes looked up and smiled, just a little. ‘If they’re bad, it’s just due to bad cooking. Not anything else. How’s that for a selling point?’

‘You’re never going to make it as a hype man,’ Sam said, but he rummaged in a cupboard and one of the drawers for plates and cutlery. His take on Barnes might never rise above “I don’t don’t like you”, but when someone jumped in front of you to take a blow from a super-strong infant in a spider onesie, the least you could do was take a bite from his slightly misshapen pancakes.

Besides, he really did want to know if they tasted anywhere as good as they smelled.

‘Uh, are you going to have any?’ Sam asked once he sat down and Barnes remained standing still by the sink, his face empty and his eyes unblinking.

‘Oh. OK.’ Barnes rinsed out his hand and sat down like he’d just been given permission. Sam tried not to think too much about that.

‘There’s worse,’ Barnes said softly as Sam plated some pancakes for the two of them. They were the thick and fluffy kind, white glaze oozing down their sides.

‘What?’

‘Than “spider-free recipe”,’ Barnes said. He paused for a beat. ‘“New spider-free recipe”.’

Sam couldn’t help but grin at that. It had been a while since he’d found anything genuinely funny; he didn’t expect it would come from this guy, of all people.

‘Here’s to your spider-free pancakes, then,’ he said, grabbing his cutlery. He barely needed the knife, though: the pancakes were soft enough that you could cut through them with a fork. The freshly-baked scent rising from his plate was making his mouth water in a way that was borderline embarrassing, but before he could dig in, he noticed Barnes awkwardly trying to both hold his plate in place and move his fork with just one hand.

A few weeks ago, when Barnes had been Fixed, Sort Of and rendezvoused with him and Sam after being defrosted, Sam had asked him about it, once it had been long enough. His first thought upon seeing Barnes again might have been _Christ, I’m never going to be rid of this guy, he’s worse than a horror movie curse_ , but even he wasn’t going to open with “I see there’s nothing up your sleeve”. Instead, he had let a lot of totally polite silence go by, and only spoke up when the two of them were more or less alone in their plane seats. ‘So… did your arm need maintenance or something?’ Hell yeah. Diplomatic as balls.

But Barnes had only looked confused. ‘No, I— Uh, Stark blew it off. I guess Steve didn’t tell you.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam glanced at Steve, who was sitting across the aisle, staring out of the plane window at the setting sun and looking like he wasn’t seeing it at all. _No. No, he didn’t bring it up_. ‘And they didn’t want to make a new one in Wakanda?’

‘No, they said they could.’ Barnes was sitting up straight, his remaining hand hogging — clutching, if Sam wanted to be honest — the armrest. He had that blank machine look of his on, but this time Sam didn’t find it creepy, he just wondered if maybe Barnes was afraid of flying. It was a dumb idea, of course, but wouldn’t it be something else? The Winter Soldier: over two dozen confirmed kills. Weak points: airplanes, possibly bunnies. ‘I just…’ He turned to look at him and Sam felt his own face grow hot. ‘I figured they’d already done more than enough.’

So now Sam just nudged a heavy bowl sitting on the table towards Barnes’ plate. Wedged between the bowl and the bottle of cooking oil Barnes had already braced against it, the plate would at least stay in place. Barnes looked up. ‘Thanks.’

‘No big,’ Sam said, and took a hurried bite of his pancakes.

For a moment, everything stopped. Then, finally, Sam could speak again. ‘Oh god,’ he said.

‘That bad?’

‘Barnes, these are the most amazing pancakes I’ve ever tasted in my life.’

Barnes smiled at that, and Sam realised he’d never actually seen him smile before. He’d seen him grin once or twice, and he’d seen weak little things, pale little ghosts of smiles. Now he was looking at the real thing, and it was like a diamond sparkling in the dark. It made Barnes’ eyes shine, and his cheeks dimple.

 _He’s kinda cute_ , Sam let himself think, despite everything, and ate another forkful. Just like the first, it tasted of sweet, airy fried batter, vanilla and cinnamon, melted icing sugar and the tang of lemon and salt. It tasted of big, lazy Sunday breakfasts and late Spring days and spilling syrup on your new rollerskates.

‘Bucky.’

‘Mmfm?’ It was hard to talk through that amazing velvety glaze.

‘Call me Bucky. I figure if we’re stuck together, you ought to call me Bucky. If you want,’ he added quickly, but with a bit of a grin.

‘If I want, huh? Well, in that case, you’d better call me Sam.’

Then Bucky did something surprising even by the standards of the Night of the Ex-Assassin’s Pancakes: he put down his fork and offered his hand. ‘Nice to finally meet you, Sam.’

Sam was sure it was kind of a joke and kind of not, and when he went for the handshake, Bucky’s hand was very warm, which he wasn’t expecting. He could feel the super-strength coiled under the skin, but Bucky’s grip wasn’t crushing; there was even something welcoming about it.

Sam lowered his hand, and that was when he got it.

For the longest time, he hadn’t, though who could blame him? He’d first been dragged into this mess because Steve had asked him to and because he knew the difference between right and wrong, just like he knew the difference between someone who’d died in the 40s and Hydra’s death machine. Then he’d got sucked in deeper because — surprise! — it turned out there was a whole pack of Hydra death machines, and if being an Avenger meant anything, it meant still knowing the difference between right and wrong. Knowing where the lines in the sand lay, even in the middle of a storm.

It had all blown up in his face, of course, because Wilson-comma-Samuel-Thomas’ cosmic file had “ass constantly kicked by life” jotted down in between “Air Force veteran” and “music lover”. But throughout all that, DC freeway shootout to glittering Wakandan towers, he had never got the why of Bucky Barnes. He got why you’d want to save an innocent man — well, innocent of that one thing, at least — from getting railroaded over something he hadn’t done.

He just didn’t get why _this_ guy.

For Sam, he’d just been dead eyes and ripped-up wings, and then he’d been old black-and-white photos, like those childhood snapshots of future murderers in some true-crime doc, and then he’d been a guy who took up too much space while still being barely there.

Now, though, he thought he was beginning to get it. Maybe the way to a man’s heart really was through his stomach rather than up and under the ribs with a double-edged knife.

‘So,’ he said, and realised he was already a good chunk of the way through his stack of pancakes; his mind might be dicking around, but at least he could rely on his belly. ‘Where did you learn to cook like this, Bucky?’

Bucky finished swallowing a mouthful of pancake. ‘Oh, I—’ he trailed off, his face drawn for a second. ‘Don’t really know. Just picked it up, I guess.’ He focused down on his plate and Sam decided to change the subject, even if he wasn’t entirely sure about what was going on.

‘Well, feel free to do it a lot more often, because damn.’

Bucky looked up, grinning again. ‘Oh, is that the idea? Hot dinner on the table after you and Steve have had a hard day of super-heroing?’

Sam wasn’t sure anything he’d done after _Stark Hard With A Vengeance_ counted as super-heroing. At best it was “being a fugitive, but in a cool way”. Still he managed to smile as he cut another piece of pancake. ‘Yeah. Next step after that is getting you to do all my laundry.’

‘Sure thing. We’re running out of washing powder, so I’ll just beat your clothes against a rock.’

‘You think I’m gonna complain about that? It’s old school.’

They exchanged a grin, then neither of them said anything for a while, the only sounds in the kitchen the occasional clinks of cutlery, soft eating noises, and the low rumble of the fridge. Sam didn’t mind it, though. It was that rare kind of silence that fit well, neither tight nor loose.

‘May I?’ Sam said, reaching for the plate of pancakes.

‘Uh, sure. Finish them, if you want.’

‘Nah, they’re your babies,’ Sam said, and pulled half the remaining stack onto Bucky’s plate with his knife and fork. Bucky’s expression froze, like the conversation had exhausted his ability to act like a normal human. Then his eyes brightened again.

Damn it, he really _did_ look cute. From time to time. In a good light.

‘You want me to… eat my own children?’

‘Hey, that’s between you and your baking, dude.’ Bucky chuckled at that, even though it wasn’t that funny, or maybe because it wasn’t, and Sam realised it was the first time he’d heard him laugh, to go with the first time he’d seen him smile. He finished transferring the rest of the pancakes to his plate — he wondered if he should leave some for Steve, but his stomach helpfully told him Steve wasn’t here, so screw him — and licked a gob of glaze off his thumb. ‘Man, this glaze is so good.’

‘Thanks. I had to improvise.’

Sam knew that should make him a little uneasy about what he’d just put in his mouth, but he didn’t really care. He still wanted to eat it by the spoonful even if it turned out to be made of cockroach powder (still spider-free!) and concentrated lactose. ‘Improvise as in…’

‘I wanted to go for maple syrup, but there wasn’t any in the house.’

‘How can we not have maple syrup? We’re _in Canada_. I bet it’s against the law.’

‘Good thing we’re already fugitives.’

‘Nope, they could let the rest slide. With the syrup thing, they got to send in the Mountie SWAT, though.’

‘Will they, uh, will they ride sleds when ramming the door?’

‘Yeah, but they’ll knock politely first.’

‘That’s a step up from my previous SWAT experiences.’

‘Be sure to leave them a good review,’ Sam said. They were both grinning, because the jokes were lame but they were their jokes, and it was good to have something to laugh about for a change.

 _I’m making cracks about the Canadian Maple Syrup Task Force with the Winter Soldier_ , Sam thought, but it no longer felt all that weird. Then he realised, with only a little surprise, that the words _the Winter Soldier_ no longer fit nearly as well as _Bucky_ did.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘we’re going to have to risk it. You should go to a store and stock up. I mean supplies in general. But mostly I’m talking about the maple syrup.’

Bucky lowered his gaze, amusement draining from his face like blood from an open wound. ‘I don’t think that’s a great idea.’

‘Come on, dude. You can’t sit around the house all day watching _Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Eh?_ reruns.’

The corner of Bucky’s mouth twitched, but it was like trying to jump on a deflated bouncy castle. ‘I don’t know if it’s safe,’ Bucky said.

Fixed. Sort of. You could no longer turn Bucky Barnes into your personal flesh puppet with his trigger words. If you said them, you’d just knock him out cold.

‘I don’t think you’ll run into Hydra at the Kwik-E-Mart,’ Sam said. The words were brash, but his tone was gentle.

Bucky gave him what was technically a smile but was really a look of grim and sad resignation. ‘That man, Zemo, he wasn’t Hydra. And I— It’s not me I’m worried about. If something happened…’

Yeah. If something happened. What was Sam going to say? That there was nothing to worry about, that nobody would get hurt, that he was just seeing god-knew-what in the shadow cast by a lamppost or a harmless shrub? Sam knew better. ‘I’ll go with you,’ he said.

‘Oh. You don’t need to—’

‘No, I do. You’re even more of an unfrozen caveman than Steve, you’d probably bring in leaves instead of toilet paper. We’ll go together. And if we, I dunno, end up in a shootout in a Tim Hortons car park, it’ll be on me, OK?’

‘Okay,’ Bucky said, tentative.

‘Besides, you need two hands to roll a maple syrup barrel. I’m assuming that’s the smallest amount they sell.’

‘Uh, you know I can pick up a few barrels one-handed, right?’ He had a smirk on, the good kind.

‘Don’t make me double dog dare you, we’re supposed to be keeping a low profile. Hey, what was your favourite brand? Maybe it’s still around.’ _Hopefully without messed-up 1930s packaging_ , he added to himself.

Bucky blushed again, just a little. ‘Dunno. I don’t think I actually ever tried it. At least not that I can remember.’

Sam finished chewing another forkful. ‘Seriously?’

‘It was the Great Depression and it was expensive. And after, uh, after everything…’ He trailed off, but Sam didn’t think he was at a loss for words. He sounded like he had too many stuck in his throat.

‘Man, we are _so_ going to buy some maple syrup.’

‘It’s a deal, then,’ Bucky said. ‘Don’t try to back out of it.’ There was a little cloud of sadness hovering in his voice, but he had a smile on, another real one.

They settled back into snug-fitting silence as they finished the stuff on their plates. After a few moments, Bucky spoke again, looking down at the bit of pancake he was cutting with the edge of his fork. ‘Sam?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I do know. When you asked me where I learned. I mean, I did just pick it up, but I do remember. I just didn’t tell you.’

 _No big_ , Sam almost said, but Bucky was still fascinated by the bit of pancake he was pushing around on his plate. There was something here that mattered to Bucky, and it was fragile as spun glass; Sam wasn’t going to step on it.

‘I had to,’ Bucky went on. ‘My mom was ill, real bad, and then my dad died. I had a little sister, so I had to learn all that stuff. Cooking and cleaning and sewing. So that’s… how I picked it up.’

 _Cool, can you take in a hem?_ , the motormouth part of Sam thought, and Sam told it to shut the fuck up. He’d looked only cursorily at Bucky’s pre-winterised past, reasoning that the real clues to his whereabouts lay on what he’d been up to since 1945, not what he’d been up to before, and that if a creepy assassin showed up at some suburban white family’s home and claimed to be their long-lost thrice-removed cousin, it wouldn’t take long for him to hear about it. Now, thinking back, he couldn’t help but feel a small, smouldering lump of shame, even though he knew he’d done the best he could with what he’d had. ‘Your sister, is she still…’

Bucky’s eyes flicked up. ‘Alive? Yeah. I looked her up on the internet.’ His lips curled in a pale wisp of a smile. ‘Man, that thing is useful.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

‘She’s almost ninety, though. And she had a stroke, so…’

Sam didn’t say anything. There wasn’t really anything he could add.

Which was why what Bucky said next managed to surprise him, even now that he’d got used to pancakes and heart-to-hearts with the former fist of Hydra (now removed for repairs).

‘Do you have family?’

He was doing that thing where he looked straight ahead, ice-coloured eyes unblinking, face like a glacier about to slide down a mountainside. Sam didn’t find it so creepy now, though. Maybe Bucky just had Resting Cold War Assassin Face.

‘Yeah. Yeah, I have family.’

Bucky took a moment to eat his last bit of pancake before speaking again. ‘It’s hard.’

 _Nah_ , Sam almost said, and after that his mind went to its usual line, how all of them knew the drill after two tours, that you just learned to roll with it, that ten months so far but not much longer, fingers crossed — and not even in scrubland and mountains — wasn’t so bad. You put things in a box so you could keep moving and keep an eye on the exits. Everybody had always needed him to be strong, so he was.

But his stomach was full and the taste of sweetness was still on his lips and all those sleepless nights were catching up with him, so maybe that was made it slip, just a bit, enough to make his eyes sting. He thought of the last time he’d spoken to his mother, a call from her before all this shit had gone down. He’d been busy and in a hurry, same as always, so he did that thing where he wrapped it up quick but not so quick that he’d feel too guilty. And now here they were.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s hard.’

Bucky didn’t say anything, just gave a tiny nod and sat there quietly. _Not like a glacier, more like a lake_. Sam didn’t know where the stray thought had come from, and tried to change the subject. ‘Sorry about your dad, by the way.’ _Oh, wow. Outstanding, fam_. ‘My dad died when I was a kid and it sucked.’

‘Oh,’ Bucky said. He sounded a little startled. ‘Thanks. I mean—sorry. That you had to go through that.’

Sam shrugged. ‘It’s fine. It was a long time ago.’

Bucky grinned. ‘Uh, not by my standards.’

‘Oh, right, I forgot your dad died in the Black Plague.’

‘He was hunting a mammoth, you jerk.’

‘Sorry, my bad,’ Sam said. Wounds old enough you could joke about them, here at the comedy roast for guys with younger sisters and dead dads. _It’s fine_. And it really was. He pushed his chair back. ‘Come on, I’ll give you a hand with the dishes. What’s so funny?’

Bucky looked like he was either having a cramp or suppressing a fit of giggles. ‘You said you’d give me a hand.’

‘I hate you.’

He didn’t.

***

Even with only three hands between them, they managed to get through the washing up pretty quickly.

‘You should call them,’ Bucky said, busy drying a plate while Sam finished up at the sink. It turned out Bucky was a wiz at one-handed toweling, which maybe wasn’t too surprising. Sam remembered that metal arm well, ripping—

_wings_

—metal and powdering concrete. It probably hadn’t been designed to handle small, delicate stuff, though now Sam couldn’t shake the mental image of the Winter Soldier balancing tiny china cups with his metal hand.

‘Who?’

Bucky looked at him while he put the plate in the cupboard. ‘Your family. You should call them.’

‘I don’t think that’s a great idea. They’re probably under surveillance.’ _Even if I’m not the big-ticket item among the ex-Avengers_ , he added to himself while he rinsed out the sink bowl.

‘There’s ways around that,’ Bucky said, even though he had to know they both knew. He fiddled with the dish towel, looking at it like the checkered pattern was suddenly fascinating. ‘I didn’t want it. All… that. With Hydra.’

‘I know, man.’

He’d never thought, not really, that James Buchanan Barnes had been the world’s most deep-cover and most successful double agent; throwing yourself of a train to keep your cover was a bit excessive. The Hydra/S.H.I.E.L.D. files Sam had studied had been light on detail and heavy on obfuscating jargon (what the hell was “baseline response calibration” and could the Cool Ranch Nazis vague it up even more?) but he’d still been able to understand the gist of what the files called the Zola-Fenhoff Procedure: somehow, they’d figured out a way to erase someone’s memories — or at least Bucky Barnes’ memories — at will. How and what they did afterwards was vague again, but the files sounded confident enough that the guy they called the asset would do what they told him to. At the time Sam hadn’t thought too much about that part. What he’d wondered about was that freshman year philosophy-and-blunts student question: if you lost all your memories, were you still the same person (regardless of how much certain defrosted celebrities insisted you were)?

It was only after he’d met Bucky— okay, well, it was only mostly _now_ — that he’d started thinking about the other half of that equation. It hadn’t all happened to some stone-faced cyborg who’d thrown him off a helicarrier. It had happened to a real live flesh-and-blood person who was standing next to him in a cramped kitchen, hanging a dish towel on a drawer handle.

And who could whip up some kick-ass pancakes.

‘I mean, it doesn’t really make a difference,’ Bucky said, his voice flat and soft. He turned around, leaned against the edge of the counter. ‘But I wish I could have, I dunno. Explained things to my sister, I guess.’

‘Would that have helped?’

Bucky gave him a one-shouldered shrug. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. Uh, people shouldn’t take advice from me,’ he said with a sad little grin.

‘It’s not that bad,’ Sam said. His chest moved in a deep breath according to his mind and in a silent sigh according to his body. ‘All right, let’s do it.’

Bucky startled again, just a little. ‘Yeah?’

‘You’re carrying all our stuff in our supply run, so I’m following your advice. Seems fair.’ _You do something you don’t want to do, I do something I don’t want to do_. He didn’t say that part out loud, but he felt sure they both knew it.

‘I did make those pancakes as well,’ Bucky said.

‘Oh, that’s how it’s gonna be? You’re going to push it?’ He was just joking around, but Bucky’s eyes turned a little glassy and Sam realised he had trod on some bruised spot without meaning to.

Then Bucky looked at him again with a smile on, small but the real deal. ‘I guess I am.’

‘Fine. Those were really excellent pancakes, so I’ll let you pick the music.’

‘Marching bands it is, then.’

‘Ugh. Good night, Bucky.’

‘The Best of Polka Music?’

‘ _Good night, Bucky_.’

‘Good night, Sam.’

Bucky was still smiling as they walked to their respective ends of the corridor and Sam realised something else, to cap off the night when he’d learned that he actually didn’t mind hanging out with the ex-Winter Soldier, who made awesome breakfast goods: Sam liked seeing him smile.

And not just because he could now admit that Bucky Barnes was kinda cute. Sometimes. In a good light.

***

_I’m fine. I’ll tell you later how you can call me_. Sam looked at the screen, a rectangle of pale, eerie light in the darkened bedroom. Christ, no wonder they called these things ghost phones. He kept staring at it for what felt like an hour, his thumb hovering over the keys, before he typed _Please don’t worry about me S_ and tapped the Send icon.

Well, bargain fulfilled, what was done was done, he thought as he disconnected and shut down the phone, then stared at the grey stripes cast by the blinds on the ceiling, hands balled at his sides to stop himself from fucking around with the phone, trying to stop a message that had already been sent.

He wasn’t going to sleep, he told himself. He was going to toss and turn all night until he felt like gnawing on that dumb marshmallow pillow and his own optic nerve. He was going to have the kind of bad dream that left him more wrung-out than if he hadn’t slept at all. He was going to fall asleep for five minutes, then wake up when a heating pipe made a noise and finally drag himself out of bed feeling like a zombie that craved coffee.

Instead — maybe it was his full stomach, dragging him down like ballast — he fell soon enough into a deep, heavy sleep.

He woke up hours later, mid-morning sun streaming into the bedroom, feeling more rested than he could remember in a long, long time.

++The End++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I run a [Bucky/Sam community](http://winterfalcon.dreamwidth.org) on Dreamwidth. I’m still setting it up so there’s not a lot of content yet, but please feel free to check it out and/or join!


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